As a modern person, Li Mengxi has seen a lot of building buildings built with excavators and cranes, but Li Mengxi has never seen a stove made of bricks and yellow mud.

He was curious about everything from ancient times.

The craftsmen were carrying earth, moving mud, and laying bricks. Li Mengxi watched the entire preparation process and found it interesting. Li Mengxi ran back and pulled his younger brother over to watch.

Then, two little people squatted on one side, leaning on their chins with their hands, watching the people busy with interest.

During this period, Liu, Guan, and Zhang came over to take a look. Liu Bei and others came over. The craftsmen stopped their work and waited for Sanfen's instructions.

Liu Bei only glanced at it and saw the Li Mengxi brothers here, "Xi'er, please help me build this stove."

Liu Bei explained.

"Okay!" Li Mengxi replied.

Then, Liu, Guan, and Zhang left.

When people are working, it's okay for Li Mengxi and Brother Li to watch. If Liu, Guan, and Zhang are watching, people will think they are supervising the work, so how can they work freely?

Although there is no harm in supervising the work, there is a saying that if the suspects are not there, how can the craftsmen be comfortable while they are really watching.

After the craftsmen prepared the mud, they used brick knives to spread the mud on both sides of the bricks. Li Mengxi took a look and realized that this tool was a bit awesome. What was awesome was that it was similar to the tile knives used by construction workers in the 21st century to build brick walls.

, a look.

Another invention that makes no sense. In the Han Dynasty, there were tile knives. Although there was no cement, there was yellow mud. Although the tile knives were not made of iron, they were made of wooden boards and could still be used.

Li Mengxi and his younger brother watched as people built the stove brick by brick.

Halfway through the base, the mason came over and asked, "Brother, do you think this force is high enough?"

When the craftsman asked, Li Mengxi patted his head and realized something was wrong.

Damn it, this one is half as high as a person before the stove is built. If the stove is finished, it won't be as high as a person's chest.

If you are boiling medicine, it would be extremely inconvenient to put the medicine jar in and take it out.

The important data parameters were not told to others. If we just talked about the structure and general shape, wouldn't it be a problem?

Li Mengxi scratched his head, pointed to the stove with some embarrassment, and said, "Uncle, can you take off two layers? I'm a little too optimistic."

Li Mengxi said sweetly and called the craftsmen uncle, and the craftsmen were no longer happy because they had to rework.

One of the masons said with a smile, "If you hadn't told me earlier, we would have been very high."

After that, the craftsman broke off a piece of mud-pasted blue brick with his hands. While breaking it, he curiously asked, "Brother, what is our fortress?"

"Stove." Li Mengxi returned.

"Stove?"

"It's for cooking. Think about it, if the wall is high, how inconvenient will it be to carry the earthen pots? Half a person's height, as high as the waist, is enough."

Li Mengxi explained.

After Li Mengxi explained this, the craftsmen suddenly realized that they had misunderstood it. They thought it was an iron-making furnace. The base was raised higher. People said that the base was used for cooking. Hehe.

The craftsmen removed two layers of bricks and asked Li Mengxi what they should do.

Li Mengxi frowned and scratched his head and thought for a while, "Where are the iron bars for the stove?"

Li Mengxi looked around, but he didn't see the iron bar. He saw a pile of scrap knives next to him, which were inferior short-ringed first knives that were full of gaps or had been broken.

The short knife is actually a thin piece of iron, embedded vertically in the stove, and functions like a thin iron rod.

If you think about it seriously, a small thin iron rod is really useless in daily life. It is relatively heavy when used as an arrow shaft, and it is also heavy when used as chopsticks. It is useless in daily life.

If you don't need it, it will be hard to find. Therefore, the thin iron rod was not found, so Zhang Fei simply sent a bunch of knives.

Same use.

The difficulty of the stove is that the stove needs to be filled with a hollow space, the bottom is built with bricks, and a book-sized hole is left in the middle. In the hole, there are several iron bars standing up to block it. Such a stove can provide ventilation up and down to support combustion.

, and can prevent plant ash from leaking to the bottom and preventing it from depositing in the stove.

If the bricks were placed vertically, even if they were laid in a circle, they would still be similar to a wall. What puzzled Li Mengxi was how to build the bricks horizontally.

Obviously, bricks cannot be covered with yellow mud and directly built up. In this case, the yellow mud and bricks will fall down together due to gravity.

The craftsmen's processing method made Li Mengxi suddenly realize that the craftsmen used bricks and laid a few bricks as pillars, then placed wooden boards on the bricks, and the wooden boards were used as supports. Then, they laid the bricks flatly on the wooden boards horizontally one by one with mud.

.

Seeing this, Li Mengxi understood that this engineering method uses yellow mud and cement in the same way. When the mud is still wet, use wooden boards to support it first and build up the bricks. Then after the mud dries, the mud solidifies into a unified loess.

The loess has a unified structure that can support the weight of the bricks and prevent them from falling.

Seeing this, Li Mengxi understood that even if the stove could be built today, it would not be used today because it would have to wait for the mud to dry.

Even if you add firewood and bake it over a fire, it will take a long time, until the afternoon.

After the stove is built, the remaining part of the stove is a little simpler.

There was no need to leave just one pot on the stove. Li Mengxi was not tall enough and could not reach the height of the stove, so he called the military doctor to come out and let him try to find out where the fire outlet was, so that it would be convenient to hold the medicine jar.

I tried it, and it said that the middle part is convenient, and the middle part is not very accessible.

This is interesting. The middle is the center of the flame, where the fire is the strongest, but it is difficult to get.

As for the half center, if it is a circle, there can be six fire outlets evenly distributed in the circle.

Six is ​​a bit less.

Add another circle around the outside, twelve more.

As for the middle part, it is also a waste. Just boil boiling water in the middle. Boil a large vat of boiling water and you will have boiled water to drink.

After discussing with the military doctor Bu, Bu knew the size of the medicine jars better than Li Mengxi. He stretched out his hand and gestured on the stove, "Military advisor, twelve is a bit too much. It won't fit in enough. Let's have ten."

Then ten.

If there are six, you can open six fire holes in a relatively even circle. If there are ten, you have to allocate the space one by one like a honeycomb.

At this point, the last structure of the stove has been completed.

The skills of the craftsmen were stronger than Li Mengxi imagined. The craftsmen did not use bricks for the stove burner, but directly made it with loess. They were afraid that loess alone would not be able to withstand it, so the craftsmen used Sanhe soil to build it, which is much stronger than loess.

Finally, when everything was finished, the craftsman, whose hands were full of clay, asked whether he should dry it in the shade or bake it in the fire.

"What about drying in the shade, or roasting over fire?" Li Mengxi asked curiously.

"To dry it in the shade, you need to cover it with a shed, keep it out of the sun, and keep it out of the rain. Let it dry for four or five days without any cracks."

"Bake it for half a day and it will taste better."

Li Mengxi understood that the fire roasted quickly, which slightly affected the intensity.

For drying in the shade, it will take four or five days without any rain.

Li Mengxi looked up at the sky. In April and May, rain comes at any time. The weather is not controlled by man, and there are risks.

so.

"Roast it over the fire."
Chapter completed!